


Vellum, Bound in Skin

by greywash



Series: Fun in the Sun Creative Calisthenics [2]
Category: Donkeyskin - Fandom, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, The Six Swans - Fandom
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, F/F, Gen, Identity Issues, Lightly experimental fiction, Lore - Freeform, Mental Illness, Murder, See Story Notes for Warnings, Swans, The Names of Things, Violence, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 00:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14988662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: Tell me a story, says Jonas, upon his cot. And, Why, my lad, says Mother Geertje, but you are the tale-teller around here!





	Vellum, Bound in Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from [**shadaras**](http://shadaras.tumblr.com/):
>
>> Prompt: Absolution. Optional: Femslash of some sort? And fairy tales sound fun! Donkeyskin's a cool and lesser known one, maybe?
> 
> So—I had a weirdly hard time getting this one to come together, for which I would like to apologize in advance, but I went _way_ over my time limit and finally just had to call it a story. 01:33:24 actually writing this story, plus like 2 hours solid obsessing about names before I ever actually sat down to type.
> 
>  **Warnings for consent issues and disturbing content** , largely (though not entirely) inherited from the canons. My full warning policy is [in my profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings), and you are always welcome to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com) with more specific warning-related questions.

Tell me a story, says Jonas, upon his cot. And, Why, my lad, says Mother Geertje, but you are the tale-teller around here! And she laughs in her broad leaf-crackling way and with her spindle dancing down beside the fire Neasa does not look up. But I do not wish to tell a story, says Jonas: I am Jacob-tired, says he, and Mother Eva at the table oiling her leathers lifts her weathered hook nose and casts upon him her falcon's eyes. Her sun-spangled hair catching the firelight.

I am Jacob-tired, he repeats. He thinks: I beat my wings.

Oh, fine, says Mother Geertje, and tells him again of the fairy who went to market to trade for a cow to keep his secrets with naught but a pocketful of magical beans.

When Jonas sleeps he is just Jonas, tonight. My little dove, said Katrijn. Jonas my love, my little dove, had said his Katrijn. When they left the palace they walked for a mile and a mile and a mile and a mile and the sun went down and the sun came up and the sun went down and they huddled together in the wood in the dark and the cold but he could not keep her warm anymore, for six years had passed but he was still a boy and he was little and also now he had only one wing. She had been the first to call him Jonas. He had not wanted to be Jacob, and it had been true, and so she had called him first. When they came to the heart of the wood there had been arrows but suddenly they had all been aimed behind them, and so they had stayed; and she had called him Jonas, so he had stayed, so Jonas he had stayed.

Jonas sleeps, and wakes again. He makes the porridge. He minds the sheep. A sheep, a sheep, a sheep with white feet. With him amid the fields stands Ivo who bears a bow and so in sunlight Jonas sleeps again. Ivo is sat beside him when he wakes, tall and straight: a shadow stretching out beside him, because Ivo knows that Jonas does not like the dark. Tell me a story, Ivo says; and so soft with sleep and not awakening Jonas says: Once upon a time the court saw their king taken by madness.

Jonas stops. Silent, stitched: his lips. 

Go on, says Ivo; and Jonas says: No. I don't like that one. And Ivo meets his eyes, and does not laugh.

The sheep are all around them, dotting like feathers the broad green fields. A sheep, a sheep, a sheep with white feet. So Jonas tells Ivo the tale of the cow who kept the fairy's secrets, and learned his lore, and when the fairy grew old the cow loved him so dearly she followed him across the sea. The sea, the sea. White foam beneath their feet.

Once upon a time, says Ivo, a princess dressed herself in uncleaned skins, and fled to the edge of the sea.

She crossed the sea, Jonas corrects.

No she didn't, says Ivo. She didn't have a boat.

She has to cross the sea, says Jonas. 

Why? says Ivo.

Because that's how the story goes, says Jonas. She dresses herself in unclean skins and flees across the sea and then she's safe.

Not my princess, says Ivo. My princess doesn't have a boat. So she dresses herself in unclean skins and flees to the edge of the sea.

Well, don't be surprised when she's caught, then, scoffs Jonas; and Ivo says, She is caught. Of course she's caught. She is running because she is ashamed of her skins but the king must catch her and make her his queen; and Jonas pushes himself up to his feet. 

In sunlight Jonas goes amongst the sheep. A sheep, a sheep, a sheep with white feet. Jonas spreads himself arm and wing take flight, run, take flight take flight! But then the sheep would take flight, they would run from him, and then Mother Geertje would scold him, for the sheep would be disarrayed, but he would remain. So he runs instead with his wing tucked in against his hollow bird ribs and battering heart to the wall of the village, and behind him Ivo calls, Jonas, wait! Jonas! Wait! But Jonas does not wait, because he does not wish for the princess to be trapped in a tower at the edge of the sea.

 _Boy_ they cried and _mad_ and _princeling idiot_ all words. The word. The same word. _Idiot mad princeling boy_ , and he moans and moans and cannot stop and the King comes for him, will come for them, he will come for them again she hears yet the horns the hunting dogs in the tower in the woods in the dark where their wings battered bars and bled and yet above them he did not scream she did not scream he Katrijn Jacob the queen could—not—permit—a scream— 

Once upon a time, says Jonas, rocking. Rocking. Rocking. Once upon a time there lived two witches one of air and one of earth and they had eaten wind and rocks until they were full up and came from the forest to meet their sister swollen with water beside the spring. There they built a house with forty-nine windows and seven doors and a knife beneath every bed for cutting and when he came they spat out their rocks and let forth their torrents and blew upon him howling gales until he fell dizzied and damaged and then they cut him, they cut him, he came for them to take from them so they cut him they cut him up they cut him to slivers and pieces and then they fed him to the fire.

Then what? asks Mother Eva. She is sharpening her knives.

And then, says Jonas, and then—

—and then—

And in the summer, the sunflowers grew up from his ashes, says Neasa, in Katrijn's soft voice. Jonas can't stand it so he goes out past the edge of the village to sleep with the sheep.

Jonas sleeps and batters Jacob's wings. Jacob's big useless ungainly wings. In the palace he had tried to keep her warm and he had tried to keep her safe and so he had struck him because he wanted and he had him flung from the palace because he could and he would have had him caged but their brothers in the sky called _Jacob, Jacob, Jacob_ , mournful, because they knew what Jacob did not know and so they kept him from her, their weaving sister queen. Because, they knew, she must weave. They knew she must not scream. The king had called her Ida. Queen Ida bears a son! Queen Ida bears a daughter! Queen Ida bears a son! In the beginning she had run from him, his men his horns his dogs, she had run from him and running cast behind her her spindle her gown her rings, every last thing she could not hold within her skin; and when he had grounded her and bound her to him the king had named her Ida, his silent weaver, his industrious queen: because she could not speak her name. 

Wake up, says Mother Eva; and Jonas jerks awake.

In the darkness she is haloed by stars. Her shorn silver-and-gold hair, turned into a cap made of sky. Her knife is in her hands and her bow across her back but watching him in the darkness she turns the knife to hold it to him but he cannot he raises batters up his hand his wing his hand his wing his hand his wing his hand his wing—

Be quiet, says Mother Eva, you'll frighten the sheep.

Quiet. Starlight. To the quiet-cold starlight, Jonas lowers his arm, and his wing.

Why did you come here, asks Mother Eva.

They don't mind, says Jonas, with a wave. A sheep, a sheep. A sheep with white feet. They will learn our secrets, he says, chest aching, and follow me across the sea.

You're not a fairy, says Mother Eva. You're just a man.

Jonas is quiet, in the night. _Am_ I a man? he asks.

Mother Eva turns back the knife, and slides it into its sheath. When I first came across the sea I cut my hair, she says. I made hunting leathers of my old unclean skins. I had been the girl Áine and I had been the servant Agnes and I had been made a mother and I was once a queen, but when I came across the sea I named myself Áed, then, and I dressed as a man and walked as a man and as a man I was Áed in the service of a king who was not my king. All of me burning. Afire.

You did not want to be their mother, says Jonas, with an ache deep in his heart. You did not want to be his queen.

I wanted to be free, says Mother Eva. And I _was_ free, as Áed the huntsman, in the service of the king.

Once upon a time, says Jonas, quickly-quickly-quickly, there was a huntsman within the wood. The king taught him to rip the dryad maidens from the trees and so he did one upon another upon another to dance by the dozen with the neighboring heads of state all night all night and never sleep until, upon one with snow-white hair and yew-brown skin and lips as red as a yew berry, he was caught—and pricked—and _poisoned_ —

Well, if so, he deserved it, says Mother Eva; and then sighs.

Above them twirl the stars. The endless, velvet-black sky.

I tore her down from your tower, says Mother Eva. Did I not? She cast her spindle after me, her rings, her gown; and I set my dogs upon her. I called myself Áed and I burned like fire and I _gave_ her to him, do you understand? So that I would still be free.

She isn't angry with you, Jonas says. 

Inexplicably, Mother Eva replies.

No, Jonas says. Once upon a time a queen fled to the woods with a broken useless fool. 

You're not a fool, says Mother Eva, sharp. You're not broken. You're just—Jonas. 

Jonas does not answer. And from the heart of the forest rose a sword sheathed in donkey-skin, he says. And to fight off her enemies, for love of her, it molded itself to fit into her little hunger-shaking child's hands.

Oh, says Mother Eva. She sounds surprised.

Mother Eva had been the first to called her Neasa, the woman who was the grave of his Katrijn, his sister, his queen. Neasa, then, if you will be so unmerciful, had said his Mother Eva; and it had been Neasa who had laughed, Neasa who had bound up his bleeding arm when he beat it and Neasa who had risen with the dawn from their bed before the fire where he did not need to watch them, his Mother Eva lain down with his Mother Geertje lain down with someone who was not Katrijn. It was Neasa who drew the water and Neasa who tended the Visitors and Neasa who crouched with Eva and Geertje beside the body bloody hands bloody mouth, when all Jonas wanted was to fly.

I don't want to be a man, says Jonas. I was a boy and I was a swan and I was a boy again and I couldn't—I couldn't—I didn't—and I don't—I don't want to be a man. I want to be—something else. For a while.

Then be something else, says Mother Eva, and pushes herself up to her feet. You're the tale-teller in this village, aren't you? So sing something else to the sheep.

He looks up to her, holding her hand down to help him: still clad in her ancient donkey leathers, hook-nosed and weathered, hair shorn and falcon-eyed, armed with bow and steel, and bare-headed but for the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Because of the similarity between [Donkeyskin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkeyskin) and [St. Dymphna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymphna), I’ve incorporated some elements of Dymphna’s story that are not traditionally part of Donkeyskin into this fic, specifically the parts having to with her fleeing to Geel, in Flemish Belgium, and her association with the sick and the mentally ill. There’s a very interesting, though not wholly unproblematic, [episode of _Invisibilia_ about (in part) Geel and its traditional approach to caring for the mentally ill](https://www.npr.org/2016/07/01/483856025/read-the-transcript), a tradition that is said to be descended from Dymphna, so that was kind of ineffectually in the back of my mind as I was writing this. (All the usual mental illness/problematic care of people with mental illness warnings apply to that link, by the by). This story also contains some references to [this Dutch lullaby](https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=1004). 
> 
> UGH SORRY THIS IS SO TERRIBLE? THERE'S A MUCH BETTER STORY IN HERE SOMEWHERE BUT IT'S DEFINITELY NOT THE STORY I MANAGED TO WRITE ~ ~ ~


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